Thursday, November 6, 2014

RAND Corporation joined military leaders at Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii for a wargame entitled “Pacific Vision.” The exercise was meant to identify the capabilities U.S. Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) would need to prevail against potential threats in the Asia-Pacific region through 2016.U.S.-China air war over Taiwan made the bold assumption that every air-to-air missile fired from a U.S. F-22 hit a Chinese fighter (100 percent kill rate) and that every Chinese missile missed the U.S. F-22s (0 percent kill rate). In their simulation, the United States still lost the fight. The F-22s ran out of missiles and the Chinese fighters were able to go after vulnerable tankers and command and control aircraft. A far more detailed simulation the following year showed the same results. Even though U.S. F-22s were pegged with a 27-to-1 qualitative advantage over Chinese fighters, their diminished numbers and the fact that they had to fight from long range meant the Chinese had vastly superior numbers and won the fight.

An uninhabited “missile truck” that brought additional air-to-air missiles to the fight to supplement human-inhabited F-22s could tip the scales back in the United States’ favor. Such an aircraft need not have the full performance characticeristics of a 5th or 6th generation fighter aircraft. It would only need to have sufficient stealth to get close enough to launch its missiles against Chinese fighters. If it then perished in the engagement, that would be acceptable provided it took a sufficient number of enemy fighters with it. It would still have accomplished the mission. The uninhabited aircraft would not need advanced autonomy, merely enough to fly in a straight line under a human’s control and sufficiently robust communications links for the human-inhabited F-22s to pass targeting data. All targeting and firing decisions would be made by the F-22 pilots. If such an aircraft could be built at relatively low costs, this uninhabited “loyal wing-man” could be a tremendous force multiplier for U.S. human-inhabited fighters.

wHoA!

h0t!

~hEy Y"all! DoN"t MiSs GsGf~!

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